A new issue of Game Studies,<\/i><\/a> the pioneering open-access journal that deals with computer and video games, is out. Of particular note – to me, at least – is that among this issues eight book reviews are two reviews of the book I wrote with Ian Bogost, Racing the Beam.<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n The two reviews are “Hackers, History, and Game Design: What Racing the Beam Is Not”<\/a> by Jos\u00e9 P. Zagal and “The fun is back!”<\/a> by Lars Konzack.<\/p>\n Zagal, who has a very interesting take on our project, calls the book “an accessible nostalgia-free in-depth examination of a broadly recognized and fondly remembered icon of the videogame revolution” and notes that it is “a book that both retro-videogame enthusiasts and scholars should have on their bookshelves.”<\/p>\n It’s important to note that Konzack developed a layered model for how games (and other digital media artifacts) can be abstracted and situated within culture in his article “Computer game criticism: A method for computer game analysis.”<\/a> With only a few alterations (merging the “software” and “hardware” layer together into a “platform” layer, for instance, and considering the cultural context as influencing all layers), this model is used in Racing the Beam<\/i> and in the Platform Studies book series. Konzack finds the book “a worthwhile read if the reader wants to know how early videogame development took place and thereby get an understanding of how videogame development came into being what it is today.”<\/p>\n I’m very pleased, as Ian is, to read these critics’ resposes to our book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new issue of Game Studies, the pioneering open-access journal that deals with computer and video games, is out. Of particular note – to me, at least – is that among this issues eight book reviews are two reviews of the book I wrote with Ian Bogost, Racing the Beam. The two reviews are “Hackers, … <\/p>\n